Reg McKay - Murder Capital. Life and Death on the Streets of Glasgow

Thanks to

Victims families who bared their pain.

Killers families who bared their grief.

Grace and John for making sure I never forget about those for whom there is no answer yet.

Paul for making sure my feet stay firmly on the ground, especially when my head floats off into the clouds.

Big Bob C for being the second biggest blether in Glasgow and great company over a swally.

The Rogano for the frequent asylum and strong liquor.

All the taxi drivers who got me there and back with an interesting tale or two.

Gerry for still putting up with the nightmare that is me.

All the booksellers who flog my books and dont look down on true crime as those luvvies do.

The team at Black & White for taking another risk on the scribblings of this dirty stop-out. A small crew, punching way above their weight. Watch their space.

Thanks mainly to The Boss the punters who have bought, borrowed and half-inched my books. Power to you.

Reg McKay

Glasgow

April 2006

CONTENTS

To R the loyal lover and M the wild child.

You keep my bogeyman at bay.

Precious souls.

See me? See Glasgow? See love?

Maybe it helps that Im an adopted son of the city. When I was a teenage boy, my old man was set free from his wage slavery as a train driver. They call it redundancy. The Tories had shut down most of the backwater train stations so he went on walkabout, working wherever theyd have him London, Alloa, Lincoln and then Glasgow. No offence to the other places, but thank God it was Glasgow who offered him the permanent job and where he decided we would live.

He put an advert in the Evening Times and now-departed Citizen asking if anyone wanted a council-house swap Glasgow for Keith, a wee town up in Banffshire a big vibrant city for a white-trash village. Like, right.

One offer came in. Because of the old mans shifts he could only go to see the place at night. It seemed a nice wee house in a quiet cul-de-sac and it was. He signed the deal that night. We were moving from the hills and glens to Govan. He didnt know it was Govan. Well, it was dark.

Glasgow folk would call my new neighbourhood Drumoyne and quite right too. On my first day at school, there were two guys in the playground chopping lumps out of each other with meat cleavers. Now, I was a bit wild then but a cleaver fight at 8.55 a.m.? I thought Id arrived in Hell. And I had, of course. Heaven and Hell thats Glasgow.

It took a while. Within a year, folk could understand what I was saying. After another year, I was settled. A year later, Id bore anyone I could corner about how Glasgow was the centre of the universe. Its a habit I havent lost a feeling thats as strong as ever.

The people are the warmest on earth with a sense of humour so deadpan and black that, on first hearing it, you dont know if theyre picking a fight or cracking a joke. Usually, theyre taking the piss and they expect you to reciprocate.

The people are the hardest working, the most stylish and the most willing to help a stranger. If youre a tourist and you get lost, pray that its in Glasgow.

Where else can you shop at Armani and come out to a Big Issue seller calling you by name? Or have a drink at Fat Boabs bar where all the punters eye you up suspiciously and silently for a full ten minutes? But all strangers and outsiders can drink at Fat Boabs bar thats the point. Thats Glasgow folk.

Its a beautiful city beyond measure. Stand in the old city centre with its buildings in blocks like some original New York scene and it looks uniform, organised, solid, plain. Ah, but just look up. Up high, the architects have built in their joy like a homage to some god if only He or She looks over our place. And they do.

Its the city with the best clubs, the best music, the best artists and, of course, the best writers. Its a city of poets as the sing-ring-sing tones of the voices turn words into folk songs, ditties, rhyming slang and, aye, even proper poems.

Comedians are us. Not just the Billy Connollys and the Chewing the Fat guys or Naked Video or Rab C Nesbitt or Rikki Fulton or that adopted son from doon the water, Chic Murray. Want a laugh? Hang around a Glasgow pub or bus stop or queue at the cash machine among ordinary Glasgow people. Comedians are us.

But what the hell do we have to laugh at?

Listen to the white coats and the grey suits for a while and you could get depressed. Glasgow to them is all about heart disease, lung cancer, heroin addiction, crime, abused kids, alcoholism, unemployment, early deaths and what not all of it the highest anywhere. Oh, aye, and murder.

Its true. We cant just wish it away. Its the everlasting contradiction of this big, beautiful city. The place where I feel safest, where outsiders feel relaxed, where a stranger will give you a helping hand without you needing to ask for it also witnesses more murders than any other western European city. The city is the witness the people do the killing.

At a time when guns are so cheap and so easy to get hold of, we have a lasting love affair with the knife. Maybe it goes back to the days when men carried daggers skean-dhus theyre called in their socks, handy for settling a bit of a dispute. Were still doing it.

Its something about the Glasgow way. Even top gangsters, with teams of armed men at their disposal, will often choose to settle a grievance by a knife fight. Or the same type of men, ordering a hit, will instruct that its done with a blade. Ask them why and some of them will say that with a knife you cant accidentally shoot a passer-by. But is that all it is?

Its also up-close and personal. Thats the Glasgow way.

Yet it isnt just knives or hit jobs that kill our people. We have crimes of passion, mental murderers, mysteries, poisonings, thrill killers, sex slayers. It isnt just men who murder but women, kids and groups. In Glasgow, you can get anything you want and everything is possible and its no different with killing we have it all here.

Anywhere you go, someone you know well is the most likely person to be your killer. Glasgows no different. Dont waste your energy being wary of the city. Choose your friends and lovers carefully very carefully.

London, Belfast, Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam all have high murder rates. By comparison, Glasgow is blood red. In Glasgow, you are twice as likely to be murdered as in London or Amsterdam, three times more likely than in Madrid, Dublin or Paris, more likely even than in Belfast with all its post-Troubles violent ways.

Yet its the place people love, where folk feel safest, the best place for anything you can think of apart from sunny weather. Thats the contradiction thats Glasgow.

See me? See Glasgow? See murder?

Career criminals is a nice way to describe them. Mobsters, gangsters and street players are more common terms. This section deals with those people, the men and women who kill mainly for business though sometimes it is personal as personal as it gets.

No apologies are given for omitting many of the well-known cases. In every section of this book, the idea is not to tell all the tales that would take several books just to cover the last twenty years, which is the period the book focuses on. The aim is to relate accounts that give a fuller sense of what really happens in this part of our world. If a case has been well written about before, then you are unlikely to find it here. Some important cases are excluded like the unsolved hit on Bobby Glover and Joe Hanlon. Paul Ferris and I have covered that in Vendetta. So theres no Fatboy Thompson or Billy McPhee or Justin McAlroy. But there are many new names and famous names whose murders are exposed fully for the first time.

You will, however, find passing reference to the Doyle Family slaughter. Not to go over ground already well covered but to tell the tale of another murder that people seem to have ignored I dont ignore it.